BERLIN (Reuters) – The heavily expansionary nature of global monetary and fiscal policy is becoming increasingly evident, European Central Bank Executive Board member Juergen Stark said on Wednesday.
Speaking at an event organised by German…
Tags: Monetary
HP Agent Enablement solution lets agents, brokers personalize customer communications for increased profitability
SAN DIEGO
HP today introduced a solution that allows insurance agents and brokers to access real-time policyholder information and create personalized, meaningful and targeted customer communications.
The HP Agent Enablement solution empowers insurance agents and brokers to enhance customer interactions by integrating with existing data systems, including enterprise content management and customer relationship management systems. The solution enables agents and brokers to increase face-to-face meeting time with customers and provide context-aware experiences that are driven by up-to-date regulatory data and customer information.
Through the HP Agent Enablement solution, insurance companies can create personalized quotes and proposals, generate policies and send policyholder notifications via customer-preferred channels including print, the web, email and SMS (text messaging).
HP Agent Enablement is based on the HP Exstream software platform and is part of the HP Customer Communication Solutions Portfolio.
“HP understands the vital role that insurance agents and brokers play as they create meaningful connections with customers, driving increased satisfaction and retention rates among policyholders,” said Tom Clayton, insurance industry specialist, Enterprise Software, HP. “HP Exstream is the most intuitive end-to-end communication solution proven to make customer interactions more profitable, and as we connect agents and brokers with HP Agent Enablement, we remain committed to helping them maximize customer relationships to drive business growth.”
Tags: Interactions
As a volunteer for the Sullivan County Animal Shelter, I would like to say thank you to Belks Department stores for holding the Charity Day sales event (twice yearly) and to the managers, Marc Jordan and Kathy Vannoy both animal lovers.
I want to sincerely thank all of the kind hearted people who bought a five dollar ticket or gave a donation to the shelter. Your money was well spent.
A substantial amount of money was raised and is now being used to spay, neuter, and treat sick or injured animals. Every single penny raised went to the medical fund.
Anyone looking for a pet, please adopt one from a shelter and remember that two pets are better than one. Be kind to your animals. They need food, water and shelter. Dont let your dog live out its life tied to a tree. Spay or neuter and be a responsible pet owner.
Thanks again to all you kind people who helped the shelter. We need more like you.
Carolyn Burnett
Bristol, Va.
Tags: Your Animals
Mick Foley Talks Impact Wrestling
The hardcore legend talks to IGN about the big TNA change, safety in the ring and the difference between wrestling and sports entertainment.
May 18, 2011
May 18, 2011
May 18, 2011
Tags: Sports Entertainment
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Iowa State University physicists, left to right, Pieter Maris and James Vary have used supercomputing power to solve the puzzle of the long, slow decay of carbon-14. That long half-life makes carbon-14 a useful tool to determine the ages of skeletons and other artifacts. Credit: Photo by Bob Elbert/Iowa State University
The long, slow decay of carbon-14 allows archaeologists to accurately date the relics of history back to 60,000 years.
And while the carbon dating technique is well known and understood (the ratio of carbon-14 to other carbon isotopes is measured to determine the age of objects containing the remnants of any living thing), the reason for carbon-14s slow decay has not been understood. Why, exactly, does carbon-14 have a half-life of nearly 6,000 years while other light atomic nuclei have half-lives of minutes or seconds? (Half-life is the time it takes for the nuclei in a sample to decay to half the original amount.)
This has been a very significant puzzle to nuclear physicists for several decades, said James Vary, an Iowa State University professor of physics and astronomy. And the underlying reason turned out to be a fairly exotic one.
The reason involves the strong three-nucleon forces (a nucleon is either a neutron or a proton) within each carbon-14 nucleus. Its all about the simultaneous interactions among any three nucleons and the resulting influence on the decay of carbon-14. And its no easy task to simulate those interactions.
In this case, it took about 30 million processor-hours on the Jaguar supercomputer at Oak Ridge National Laboratory in Tennessee. Jaguar has a peak performance of 2.3 quadrillion calculations per second, a speed that topped the list of the worlds top 500 supercomputers when the carbon-14 simulations were run.
The research projects findings were recently published online by the journal Physical Review Letters.
Vary and Pieter Maris, an Iowa State research staff scientist in physics and astronomy, are the lead authors of the paper. Collaborating on the paper are Petr Navratil of TRIUMF (Canadas National Laboratory for Particle and Nuclear Physics in Vancouver) and the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California; Erich Ormand of Lawrence Livermore National Lab; plus Hai Ah Nam and David Dean of Oak Ridge National Lab. The research was supported by contracts and grants from the US Department of Energy Office of Science.
Vary, in explaining the findings, likes to remind people that two subatomic particles with different charges will attract each other. Particles with the same charges repel each other. Well, what happens when there are three particles interacting thats different from the simple addition of their interactions as pairs?
The strong three-nucleon interactions are complicated, but it turns out a lot happens to extend the decay of carbon 14 atoms.
The whole story doesnt come together until you include the three-particle forces, said Vary. The elusive three-nucleon forces contribute in a major way to this fact of life that carbon-14 lives so long.
Maris said the three-particle forces work together to cancel the effects of the pairwise forces governing the decay of carbon-14. As a result, the carbon-14 half-life is extended by many orders of magnitude. And thats why carbon-14 is a very useful tool for determining the age of objects.
To get that answer, Maris said researchers needed a billion-by-billion matrix and a computer capable of handling its 30 trillion non-zero elements. They also needed to develop a computer code capable of simulating the entire carbon-14 nucleus, including the roles of the three-nucleon forces. Furthermore, they needed to perform the corresponding simulations for nitrogen-14, the daughter nucleus of the carbon-14 decay. And, they needed to figure out how the computer code could be scaled up for use on the Jaguar petascale supercomputer.
It was six months of work pressed into three months of time, Maris said.
But it was enough for the nuclear physicists to explain the long half-life of carbon-14. And now they say there are more puzzles to solve:
Everybody now knows about these three-nucleon forces, Vary said. But what about four-nucleon forces? This does open the door for more study.
Provided by Iowa State University (news : web)
Tags: Interactions
As electronic music continues its domination of a rave new world — with dubstep now heard on shopping mall PA systems and house music a common soundtrack for commercials — it comes as little surprise that a traveling one-day festival would plot a path across North Americas summer sheds, featuring a cornucopia of electronic heavy hitters. And, thus, along comes IDentity — an itinerant dance party and social gathering not unlike the original vision behind Lollapalooza or HORDE. — except, of course, that IDentity will be defined and driven almost exclusively by electronic music. Headlined by Kaskade, additional artists on the tour include Pretty Lights, Rusko, Steve Aoki, DJ Shadow, Modeselektor, Etienne De Crecy, Crystal Method, Nero, Nervo, Skrillex and lots more, on multiple stages.
Granted, most of the acts on the roster (which will vary slightly from city to city) are DJs and producers, but there is one more traditional four-piece band thatll be featured on the main stage — the Disco Biscuits (pictured). Naturally, I assume theres going to be a lot of trance thrown down on ID tour, and trance is our bread and butter, bassist Marc Brownstein tells Spinner. In the late 90s, the band engineered a hybrid of live, improvisational-heavy rock music with electronic dance styles and, in doing so, really pioneered trance-fusion.
The Disco Biscuits have been a featured act at festivals such as Bonnaroo, Lollapalooza and Rothbury, but was most recently seen at the electronic mecca known as Ultra. The nice thing is, we have 150 original songs in all genres, says Brownstein. We can play an hour of electronic music every night and never run out of material.
IDentity Festival will launch on August 11 in Noblesville, Ind. and snake its way across America before wrapping at the iconic Gorge Amphitheater in George, Wash. on Sept. 10. Visit the official festival website to peep the deets, including the actual lineup for your hometown. And although it might not be mentioned in the FAQ, the tour will, clearly, be BYOGS — as in, bring your own glow sticks.
Tags: Traveling
MEDFORD, Ore. Obamas visit to Ground Zero hit home for several local fire fighters Thursday.
Kurt Bennett with Medford Fire and Rescue says the Presidents visit and interaction with victims families demonstrates compassion to the lives sacrificed during the attacks. Bennett says it brought some much needed closure to the attacks that happened 10 years ago.
His interactions with the family brought some closure and had he not done that, it wouldve been very disappointing to me, he said.
Hundreds of fire fighters lost their lives on 9-11 and Bennett says this is a day when he can reflect on the courage of his brothers.
Local fire fighters say they appreciate Obamas visit and say it was a step in the right direction.
Tags: Interactions
To help Louisiana residents determine if theyre ready for a hurricane, LSU AgCenter housing specialist Claudette Reichel developed a 20-question quiz.
The answers you give can help you evaluate whether youre well-prepared or whether you need to take some action now, Reichel says. The quiz covers everything from whether your family has a written emergency plan to supplies you have on hand.
As hurricane season kicks off, Reichel and other experts say its a perfect time to evaluate where you stand and what you can do to be better-prepared if a storm heads your way.
Even if youve been through a hurricane before, its easy to forget some of the preparations that can protect your property and family, so its a good idea to review your plans and make sure you havent left anything off, Reichel says. Taking the right precautions before a storm has the potential to save time, money, hassles and even lives if a hurricane strikes.
LSU AgCenter experts say the following hurricane quiz can help you gauge whether youre prepared. They recommend you take action if you answer No or I dont know to any of these 20 questions:
Do you have a disaster survival plan?
Have you planned an evacuation route and destination?
Do you have an emergency communication plan for staying in touch with or getting messages to friends and family?
Is your homeowners and flood insurance coverage up-to-date and sufficient to replace your home and belongings if they are damaged or destroyed?
Do you have an inventory of your property and belongings?
Do you have copies of your insurance policies, household inventory and other important papers, as well as other valuables, in a safe place one thats waterproof and fireproof?
Do you know how to turn off your utilities (electricity, gas and water)?
Do you have a plan and supplies on hand to protect and secure your home and outdoor items (and your boat and pool, too, if you have them)?
Has your roof been inspected within the past six months?
Have you trimmed the trees and shrubs around your house?
-Has your car been maintained, and are the tires, including the spare, in good condition?
Do you have a plan of what to do with food in your refrigerator and freezer in the event of a possible power outage?
Is your emergency phone list up-to-date and handy?
Do you have emergency survival supplies such as batteries, a battery-operated radio, flashlights, lanterns, fuel, nonperishable food for three days, water/water jugs, manual can opener, medicines, travelers checks or cash, and other necessary items on hand?
Do you have an emergency supply kit for your car?
Do you have a plan of how to take care of family members with special needs (those with disabilities, infants or the elderly)?
Have you decided what you will do with your animals if you must evacuate?
Have you budgeted for the added expenses to protect your home, buy supplies, evacuate, clean up and recover?
Have you discussed your emergency plans, duties and rules with your family?
Do you know the LSU AgCenter offers publications and other free information on disaster cleanup and recovery on its website (www.lsuagcenter.com) and through its parish offices across the state?
For more information on preparing for a disaster or recovering from one, contact your parish LSU AgCenter office.
You also may find the online publications such as Theres a Hurricane Forming in the publications section of the LSU AgCenters website at www.lsuagcenter.com and more information by going directly to www.lsuagcenter.com/hurricanes.
One other resource is the LaHouse Resource Center near the LSU campus in Baton Rouge and its online website www.lsuagcenter.com/LaHouse for information and exhibits of hurricane-resistant building systems, methods and products.
Tags: Your Animals
May 26, 2011
FOWLER BAULD MITCHELL LTD.
The curtainwall-clad Halifax Central Library is comprised of a concrete cast-in-place structure on all levels but the top floor, where a steel structure was required to accommodate the eight-metre cantilever.
Halifax Central Library envelope-structure interactions provide challenges
DON PROCTER
correspondent
Site excavation of the new Halifax Central Library is off to a slow if not peculiar start. Excavators are scraping four inches of soil off the north end of the site at a time, giving archeologists an opportunity to carefully comb through the material for remnants of historic foundations and artifacts.
In the 1700s, the site was home to Bellevue House, the residence of the British Armys Commander-in-Chief for Halifax, and before that it might have been occupied by local natives. Archeologists will do a detailed search to record, study and preserve any discovered items.
Having a team of archeologists controlling the tempo of construction might be nerve-racking to most builders, but the librarys construction manager isnt losing any sleep over it.
That is because work started a few months early and archeologists are only interested in what lies below one of two lots for the new building.
If they find something of interest on the north lot, well redirect excavation to the south site where there are no restrictions on excavation or construction, says Roland Doucet, construction manager for EllisDon,which is acting as construction manager for the 100,000-square-foot landmark building in downtown Halifax.
The library, which features several glass floors stacked at odd angles to each other, will be a landmark in the citys hub.
The design calls for a ground floor setback on the property while two upper floors hang over a ground-floor plaza by about three metres, says George Cotaras, partner in charge with Fowler Bauld Mitchell Ltd.
The Halifax-based architect is in a joint venture on the library project with Denmark-based Schmidt Hammer Lassen Architects.
The designs most striking feature is the smaller top floor, which makes up some of the lost space with a cantilever of more than eight metres over the lower floors. The interior features a five-storey atrium offering views of various floors twisted on their axis.
To come up with the unusual design, the architect hosted almost half a year of public input meetings in a world cafe format that allowed every attendee a chance to be heard, says Cotaras, pointing out that the process is unusual in Halifax.
At most public meetings an architect stands up in the front of the room and says, lsquo;Heres the design, what do you think? Here, we asked the public what they wanted their library to be.
The curtainwall-clad building is comprised of a concrete cast-in-place structure on all levels but the top floor where a steel structure was required to accommodate the eight-metre cantilever.
The building is targeting a LEED Gold certification. Green features include advanced Low-E glazing and spectrally-selective glass to maximize natural light while minimizing infrared and ultraviolet light. One of the buildings many roofs will be green.
The project will also score at least one LEED point for diverting 50 perc ent of construction waste from landfill. The builder hopes go a step further, diverting an additional 25 per cent a tough target to meet on most projects for an additional LEED point.
Doucet says the big construction challenge will be dealing with the extensive details where the building envelope meets the structure because the building is essentially divided into four buildings, positioned at different angles (like a skewed stack of books) to each other. The many small roofs will require extensive details at penetrations with the envelope.
Its not the body of the roof or the (high-efficiency) curtainwall that were concerned about; its where they transition from one area to another, says Doucet.
The builder says another challenge will be dealing with the shortage of skilled trades mechanical tradespeople are a case in point. Part of the problem stems from an aging workforce nearing retirement but the shortage is exacerbated by a migration of workers west (to Fort McMurray, Alta., for example) where jobs are plentiful and money is good, says Doucet.
To deal with the shortage, rather than set an impossible-to-meet aggressive schedule, EllisDon will meet with its subs to sequence work and in some cases stretch activities in a manner that subs can handle, he says.
The key is to accomplish this without delaying the project.
The library is slated for completion in December 2013.
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Tags: Interactions
Jennifer Zarek and Sarah Phinney are Northwest graduates, but their high school education isnt over yet.
The friends will spend five days with their band teacher, Shawn Pfanstiel, 58 of their concert band classmates and 14 Northwest parents in Boston. But the trip wont just give them extra musical and historical knowledge before they head to college next fall. It also will be a last hurrah of sorts for the young women.
The trip costs each student $1,250, a price that covers all but six meals. The school didnt contribute any funds and the students, and their families had to raise funds or personally carry the cost. About two-thirds of the band members, freshmen through seniors, are going. The remaining 33 students couldnt go, mostly due to financial restrictions, Pfanstiel said. Compared with the Northwest choir trip to New York City last year, the band students are paying about $650 less.
Tags: Traveling
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